Researching and Transforming Adult Learning and Communities / Research on the Education and Learning of Adults (PDF)

Can adult education and learning be understood
without reference to community and people's daily lives? The response to be
found in the chapters of this volume say emphatically no, they cannot. Adult
learning can be best understood if we look at the social life of people in
communities, and this book is an attempt to recover this view.

The chapters of this volume reflect ongoing
research in the field of adult education and learning in and with communities.
At the same time the work of the authors presented here offers a very vital
reflection of the work of the ESREA research network Between Local and Global -
Adult Learning and Communities. The chapters showcase the broad range of
professional practice, the variety in both methodology and theoretical
background, as well as the impressive scope of field research experience the
authors bring to bear in their papers.

The first section provides the broad view of
research into adult learning and community development emphasising how social
movements are at the heart of local and global change and that they are critically
important sources of power. The second section focuses in on the practice of
educators/mediators working in local and regional contexts in which the
tensions of the wider policy and discourse environment impact on adult
learners. The third section privileges the view at the close level of research
inside local communities in the field.

International researchers and practitioners,
particularly young researchers, who are active in adult learning and in
local/global communities will be interested in this book. The emphasis of the
chapters is on participatory and emancipatory social research. Empowerment of
women in rural communities, involvement of communities in social and
environmental movements, power-sharing in community research projects and the
exposure of hegemonic, globalising forces at work in ethnic communities are
among the themes developed in this volume.